


Summer's Eye

by asthal



Series: The Summer Eye and the White Tiger [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends, 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Demon Snow is a Shiki, Nakajima Atsushi and Natsume Takashi are the same person, The Book of Friends is an ability, To Be Continued
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27750259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asthal/pseuds/asthal
Summary: Ever since he was young, Atsushi could see things no one else could. It only gets better from there when he finds a book of names after being kicked out from the orphanage.Or: Dazai miscalculates, Atsushi gets possessed, and everyone finds that the tiger isn't really a tiger. Not necessarily in that order.
Series: The Summer Eye and the White Tiger [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029942
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The minute I learned Natsume had silver hair in the manga, I couldn't help but think of how can I fuse two entirely different animes and have it make sense. Thus, this story was created.
> 
> This will be a one-shot, depending on how I'll continue it and what feedback it'll get. I'll probably continue it as drabbles or small stories from this world.
> 
> I'm sorry if the characters are OOC.

He's running through a small town when he finds the book. He takes a breather, hoping the tiger wouldn't eat him while he's resting. Atsushi could only sigh sadly, curling his body in himself for warmth while hiding near some smelly trash.

Atsushi finds the book beneath dirty garbage while scavenging for some food. Even beneath it all, it was still well kept and managed despite it being blemished by dirt and sticky soft drinks.

Any other person would've turned a blind eye to it, deeming it a useless block of text. It catches his eye, and all he could do was blink in confusion. Atsushi whips his head around, looking, half wondering if the tiger was near or any passerby that was watching him but no one was in sight.

He has it in his hand, thumbing the kanji on the book's front. It felt like it was calling to him, and that the concern over the man-eating tiger that was after him was all lost and that the focus on the book had all of his attention.

 _'The Book of Friends'_ was printed on the cover.

* * *

Atsushi's in another town by the time he's flipping through the small book. It wasn't what he expected it to be, only having what seemed to be individual names largely painted on each page. Never front and back, oddly, but he never questioned it.

He once thought of abandoning the book but the decision to do so never came. It somehow felt wrong too, as though misfortune would come upon him more as the tiger would.

Plus, there was some sort of calling from it too. It was strange but Atsushi never once felt the tiger's eye on him ever since.

_Every book had its story, and he was going to find out what._

* * *

Atsushi was carefully washing the book when he saved a man drowning in the river.

He was using his rags as a, well, rag to wipe away the remains of stickiness and dirt on the book when his eye caught a pair of legs and possibly a body partially submerged in the water.

"Are- Are you alright?" He asked when he got the man out, hands hovering over the guy unsure. A hand was placed on his shoulder, a chill running down his spine suddenly.

Atsushi yelped, then sputtered, and screamed a bit too loudly when another man appeared. He was tall, had hair colored darker than the sunset, and a similar coat to the unconscious man from the river.

A mask obscured the man's face. Eerily enough, the masked man with hair darker than the sunset towered over the drenched unknown all too obviously.

"Hey, just-" Atsushi felt something die inside of him when the masked man's attention averted from the guy to himself. He winced. "Just give him some space-"

The drenched man abruptly sits up. His head turns to Atsushi. "Was it you that interrupted my submersion?"

"Your submersion? I saved you!" Atsushi then points at the man's towering masked and quiet friend. "Even your friend was worried too!"

"Don't you know? Submersion? As in committing suicide?" The maniac says, a light tone in his voice as if he were saying the sky was blue. He tsked and then blinked owlishly in the direction Atsushi was pointing at.

"There's no one there."

It's Atsushi's turn to blink, taken aback. The man was still there, silent and standing there like a statue.

He couldn't see him. At all. It was only Atsushi who could.

"Oh."

* * *

Atsushi remembers a time when he had been called another name. A name he was given when he was born, then lost when he came to the wretched place that was his personal hell.

He barely remembers it. A name so distant that had once clung to him was washed away by the sullen orphanage and the Headmaster. The name was written somewhere-somewhere a long time ago when he was dropped at the orphanage.

Gone and thrown away. Burnt, perhaps, because the headmaster's favorite hobby was to burn all the things Atsushi had as a source of happiness.

The orphanage's library was his only escape from everything. No one came in there, only him. No one wanted to be near him, so he went to a place where no one went.

Someone had come into his safe place one day. Atsushi would be huddled behind shelves of books while that someone would be sitting near the doorway, shuffling through books and books and books.

"I know you're in here," says the someone. A man. "I used to do that too, but I realized no one sees me."

And it became like that for days, for weeks, for a month at least. The man would call out to him, shuffling through the books. He would sometimes read aloud, too, as if to soothe Atsushi, to coerce him from his hiding place.

But… Tiny, small, young, naive, and cautious Atsushi refused.

Until…

"You can see them too, right?"

A different conversation starter.

"The kappa at the pond… I see you feeding them sometimes when everyone's ignoring you."

"So?"

" _So_ ," The man said, his voice gaining a lighter tone. "It's kind of you to do that, Natsume-san."

This had got little Atsushi to peek from his spot. The man wore traditional Japanese clothing with an overflowing hakama that drowned him where he sat. A rectangular cloth was tied around his eyes, a face painted on it.

"My name isn't Natsume."

"Oh? I guess I thought you were someone else."

And it ended. Just like that. But for Atsushi, it was the first time someone hadn't gone after him just for talking to them.

It was the day after that he came to find that the man was gone. He waited the next day and the next. The man never came back.

Did he do something wrong? Was it because Atsushi said he wasn't this Natsume person? _Why didn't he say yes_ _?_

The man came back a week later. He's sitting there, at the same spot but had several bags placed near him. He saw tiny, young, and crying Atsushi and placed a white bag into his hands when the child ran to him.

"For you, child. It will protect you." The man smiled. "You are the first in your kind, and will be the last."

He was dreaming when he saw the man again, the last time. Underneath a moonlit sky of countless stars, the man was there without his face cloth, his back on the side of a white tiger.

* * *

* * *

Atsushi wonders if this is a good idea.

He's sitting on a couple of crates with his knees pressed against his chest, his book hugged right under him. The moon was nostalgic in a way he cannot describe. Sitting on top of a mountain under the moon's guidance and a protector's gaze…

But under the moon's listless gaze, only they remain.

"...Will it come?"

"It will."

His stomach gives a lurch when he sees the man with the mask right in front of him. He obscures the moonlight, his shadow towering over Atsushi.

"You can see me." The man spoke. "Can't you, Natsume-san?"

Atsushi fingers the book right under him. He whispers, muffling his face into his rags. "Don't call me that."

The masked man tilts his head. "That is your name, is it not? You smell just like her."

Ah. This man was a monster, too. Like all the others. Not a monster hiding in the closet, or a monster coming to eat you from under the bed, but the monsters in stories that are either nice or looking for something.

"Who?"

"Natsume Reiko."

The man says something under his breath, and only Atsushi is there to hear him.

" _I wish for my name back,_ Natsume-san _._ " a whisper.

"Atsushi. Nakajima Atsushi." He corrects him, everything else going over his head. It always felt wrong to call himself that. "Why are you following him?"

Dazai was more engrossed by his book than Atsushi's ghostly conversation. Either that, or he's just good at appearing like he's doing just that.

"I don't know." The man says. "I feel like I left something behind. Like a book I left unfinished."

The taller man shifts slightly, his hand going up to his mask and scratching it.

"That is why I want you to give me back my name, Nakajima-san."

* * *

It's a bang that sounds within the warehouse that sets him off.

"I-It's here!"

"Must be the wind."

He stares.

"But the man-eating tiger has come to eat me. It knows-"

"It won't be coming from there. Although, I find it very strange, Atsushi-kun."

Dazai closes his book with a loud clap. He tells Atsushi something, presenting his findings, his deductions.

The truth, if one were to listen to them, but Atsushi has trouble finding it very likely. Because he knew it wasn't true.

"What are you trying to say?"

"You're an Ability user," Dazai says. "One who morphs underneath the moonlight."

There's a crash, a shatter of windows, and at that moment Atsushi knew they were going to die.

The tiger was here, latched onto Atsushi's arm by its teeth.

A crunch filled his ears, and a scream tore through the night.

"Atsushi-kun!"

* * *

He and Dazai are separated by two ends. Dazai at the tiger's back and Atsushi at its front.

"He is no longer a god." he hears the man murmur quietly, awed. "Only a corruption of himself."

What?

He turns to him, glancing at the book. "I suppose you were given the blessing of the White Tiger to be your protector. Instead of a blessing, it latched on to you. By the time you and he were one, he started absorbing all your emotions and energy to survive… And in turn, became a deadly man-eating tiger."

Atsushi gazes up at the man wordlessly. Something within him wanted to shrivel up and die. "It's because of me-" he stammers.

"Don't blame yourself." The man retorts sharply. "It was the Tiger's choice to protect you in that way. It possibly knew of the repercussions but did it anyway."

Atsushi could help but ask. Why?

"Gods like that love humans. They'd do anything for them but not for themselves."

The tiger jumps at the two. The man pushes Atsushi out of the way.

"Yu- _Yurei-san!_ "

He watches in horror as the tiger jerks the man around like a chew toy. The cracked mask belonging to the man eyes him from above, from the maw of the corrupted god.

"Use the Book of Friends, Natsume-san." The man struggles in the tiger's grip, pushing it away feebly with his arm.

"Return his name."

The book falls on his lap and opens itself, responding to the call. Atsushi's in a daze, and a light, gentle whirlwind sways around him and the book.

_(As this was happening, a yellow-haired teen slams a pole too large for his body on the tiger. To his surprise, the pole goes through it.)_

The pages stop. One page sticks out with one individual name—one that had tiny specks of glittering moonlight blue.

The whirlwind calms, becoming a gentle storm of text and names. Atsushi stands and straightens, folding the paper and placing it between his lips.

He claps his hands.

_"That which shields me, reveal thy name."_

It feels right in his hands. The movements, the words, the wind. The tiger in front of him with its mouth open wide to eat him whole.

_You became my friend and gave me a blessing while knowing it'd corrupt you. You shielded me from everything, yet I was the one to be affected._

"I return this to you, Byakko."

_I can't promise that I'll ever forgive you._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The meeting between a tiger man and a girl go unexpectedly well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The mountain top is more beautiful at night."

Seasons change. Days pass. Months, years. Everything is still and tranquil with the summer sun’s rays beating overhead. The sky is bright blue with a tint of a lighter shade of the sun, a sign of a day that was going to end.

Under a cherry blossom tree on top of a mountain, a man in a traditional kimono sits. A book in hand, he turns the pages as the cool summer breeze weaves through his paper mask. 

The kanji ‘王’ is painted bold and large on the center.

“‘ _The Four Heavenly Kings._ ’” sounds a voice from beside the man. He is unperturbed by the disruption but only surprised by the face that appears next to him.

“It’s a good read.” They comment, “But… it’s a little outdated for my tastes.”

The man doesn’t say anything but he has stopped reading his book. A pink petal lands on his unread page as he begins to flip over to the next, marking it for another time. 

“Do you really think so?” He asks, finally. Curiosity tints his voice, calm like the pond down the mountain. 

The person hums. 

A breeze weaves around the two. The wind pushes his mask, allowing bright blue eyes to peek through. He catches a head of silver hair and a feminine face. 

“Then where can I find another, to prove that this one is good?” He holds the book up, waving the worn thing. It was crumbling from age.

“I can get you a modern version if you’d like.” She offers. “But you have to answer my question first!”

The man inclines his head knowingly. The bearer of the Book of Friends. The river spirits love to spread their stories of a terrible human who takes the names of yokai who cross their path. Their streams carry into the west, thus spreading to him.

Though, he doesn’t say a word as he is more interested in what she is planning. 

“What do you think of humans?”

He blinks. He decides to entertain her. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think of humans? The good ones? The bad ones?” She repeats, smiling. “Personal opinion? If you answer wrong you’ll have to give me your name.”

 _Oh_ , the man thinks, _wouldn’t it make more sense to answer that question yourself?_

“You ask what my opinion is on humans,” He says, mostly to himself. “Why, I believe that the answer to your question can go many ways.”

The man leans fully against the bark of the cherry blossom tree. Its branches wiggle slightly, the petals trembling in excitement. The shy wind calms and cools as the day begins to end.

“I think that humans are very wonderful but also very frightening,” He says truthfully in admittance. “Saying humans can be good and bad is a black and white view. You’re old enough to understand that, I hope. Humans are wonderful like that because they can be more or less bad, and it is what keeps them thriving and growing. Actions can breed conflict, conflict can breed hatred. And through all of that?”

“The temptation.” He finally says. The cool wind breezes by, a gust of air that plows through the flock of the _Hotaru_ dancing around the tree. “

“Humans are wonderful because they are able to do and undo their actions, adapting to it, and growing. They are also frightening because of this, the temptation of the things that follow them and makes them change.” Reiko muses, closing her eyes in wonder. She hums, dragging out each hum and pausing.

“Huh, That’s a similar thing to what _he_ said…” She says under her breath, sighing loudly. “I _quite_ like that answer. Unfortunately.”

“You are not going to ask for my name?” Wasn’t that the point of this? 

She nods, an everlasting smile on her face. If it unnerved the man, he didn’t show it.

“Oh, I will, tomorrow. You said something very similar to someone I like. Have you been reading his writings or something?” 

And she disappears just as quickly as their conversation.

* * *

The man is there again, watching the sun drift downwards till the new day. His book, worn and torn, sits next to him like an old friend. The fireflies revolve around him like the branches of the cherry blossom tree. 

A peaceful summer evening. 

His ears pick up several murmurs from down the mountain. He catches the soft laughter and murmurs from the west, his domain. It piqued his curiosity the moment he realized it belongs to the bearer of the Book of Friends and another.

It was no ayakashi but of a human’s. A male.

Inconspicuously, the man slowly crouches on all fours and transforms. A dome of blinding light covers the top. A pure white feline walks out of it, its blue eyes on the humans.

It swerves through bushes, climbs through thick bark, and weaves delicately through trees and branches alike. It finds itself in a clearing. The smell of grass and rainwater filter its nose. 

The two auras of humans fill his vision. Different yet similar.

One smells of books and ink--of newly filled pages of a book. A writer, perhaps. There was an underlying smell there, too, of something foreign and somewhat akin to his kin. Familiarity. The other gave off the scent of nature and paint of a herbal fragrance that reminded him of the exorcists that would linger here and there…

Both, unfortunately, shared a similar scent with each other. It wasn’t the foreign fragrance similar to a fellow ayakashi but that of a… _mutual loving_ kind.

The man turned cat suddenly feels embarrassed and a bit touched that Natsume Reiko would choose _his_ domain to be with her mutual other. He shifts on his paws, exiting the clearing.

* * *

_(If the two had anything to comment on when a white cat came into their space, pawing at their legs with a green book in its mouth, the cat would’ve congratulated them.)_

_(“The ink is still wet,” The male commented, feline brownish-golden eyes too unnatural that of a human’s blinked._

_“I see.” A small laugh escaped the girl’s lips when her eyes peered at the note under the ink. “Very clever, neko-chan.”)_

**白虎**

byakko

_"The mountain top is more beautiful at night."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think instead of explaining things I left more unanswered questions. Whoops.
> 
> Reiko's character was kind of hard for me to grasp properly. We only know her from small glimpses, but the only feeling I get from her is that she's afraid of getting emotionally attached. She's fickle in every memory we see her in. I don't know, but that's what I feel.
> 
> To address why Byakko gave Reiko his name, he gave it away out of interest. Even though he knew she'd never call him, he had done it anyway. But why interest? Her smell is like a human's, but that of a youkai too. As well as the other guy's smell. Although it's foreign to Byakko, it smells like long-distant kin to him and he's curious why they smell like that. Long story short, those other smells are what Abilitiy users give off. 
> 
> Spoilers, I guess. I'll explore more into it.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> ...I think I butchered his character. Whoops.
> 
> I didn't know if Byakko actually appeared in the Natsume anime/manga. So if he did... Well. Too late lol.
> 
> Feedback? Questions, comments, or concerns?


End file.
